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Saturday, June 25, 2011

My soundtrack is rightly named 24. What it invokes at first is a feeling of Disney's glorious 1940's era, with energetic music that guides the characters and forms of the animation onward. It's a very multi-faceted piece of music. I see it as an ocean, calm in some moments and tempestuous in some others.

Yet what it represents more fundamentally for me is a crescendo of intensity. This can fit with a large number of subjects, though my preference goes right now to some sort of dance.

The different levels of intensity will give some working space for different types of emotions, different types of intensity and reactions. How would someone react to such a tune is probably what is most important as of now.

The quick tempo and nervous playing style implies a lot of agitation, though that is not completely necessary as the actual BPM is not that high. There are also some moments where the music loses all it's intensity to regain it in violent and unexpected surges of music.

The next step with this piece is a logical and efficient demarcation of the different parts of the song, as it contains multiple types of music. This allows a nice differentiation of the multitude of emotions and reactions the characters might have.

-Possible Setting-

The setting is important. As of now I am tending to direct my thoughts towards a 1950's America. Maybe being in the US pushes me towards this, but I would like to work around the theme of over-consumerisms which is so prevalent today.

This is Post-War era, where America is this eldorado of hope and capitalism. What really interests me is the difference between the cover that it shows the world, and the highly racist and consumerist society that lies under the cover of complete freedom.

What if someone from today found himself in that world. First we would need to define that somebody.

I picture someone who is ecologically aware, tolerant, in favor of recycling and reusable energies. How would he react in a world where global warming, oil shortage, economic crisis and modern pop music are only found in the most far fetched science fiction?

This is also a world of Cold War, where the two sides are pushing their own style boundaries to establish themselves as the model for the world. This is a time of conflict in Korea, a time of fear.

-Three Act Structure-

Though it is still early for a defined three act structure, I already have some idea on how things could go.

-Act 1-

A simplified and abstract version of what could happen.

Character finds himself in a frantic orgy of consumerism, in colorful world of cars, drive ins, supermarkets and elegant people. There is a sort of ballet feel to it, a choreographed act that every one has ingrained in their mind. The character follows and enters some place, probably a giant supermarket.

-Act 2-

The whole thing reaches a climax of, well, everything, and the character loses it. He enters this completely abstract world of shapes and forms, as he is pulled apart by the forces around him. This is the open area, where anything can happen, without too much explication needed.

-Act 3-

He comes back to his senses and finds himself doing the same thing as the others.

-End-

This is obviously but an idea, though I believe that in today's world it could be relevant. The character starts, or thinks he is, independent. Yet after some complicated and unknown process he finds himself like everyone else.

Today it seems that we are smartly pushed by everything around us to believe we are unique and that world revolves around us. With all our technology, we are always in contact with each other, yet we are so apart. Everyone believes in his own uniqueness, calling himself a world changer, an ecologist who uses the internet to propagate his ideas, who drives a hybrid car and buys his food from an organic store.

The idea behind the 1950's, at least how I see it, is independence through communitarism. Though we have our own rights, if you are white and a male, you still react as whole, proud as you are about wining WWII and your obvious superiority to the scary Communists far across the world.

Today we try and act as if everyone is completely independent and adapting the environment, be it ecological or socio-political, to his own needs. Yet it seems today that we are even more pushed into cases, completely overwhelmed by the 60 years or so of capitalist evolution. We do not control anything, and while in the 50's this was acceptable, today it is not. When I say we I mean us as collective entity. The American society of the 1950's reacted to the horrors of WWII, to the heroism of it's soldier's and mainly to the new found world order they now co-dominate. The European powers are all but spent, and without the Marshall plan, they would have been lost.

This switch of power creates a sense of birth right, and the still present belief that the world requires the guidance of the United States of America to thrive.

What could be interesting would be to include some elements that show that today's game of economics is also played by China, and East Asia in general, and that the US is more and more dependance of this part of the world, despite their arrogant attitude of dominance.

- Art Influence -

What artist could influence my work? This is a question that is always being answered as the influence of old as new artist is omnipresent, especially in today's connected society.

What I have decided quit early on is two different parts. The first, real part and the second abstract one. I have yet to decide the amount of difference between the two, but in style and color I would like them to stay similar, not to have two distinct parts, only put together in a continuous time frame.

Koert Van Mensvoort

The main goal is to show most people's hypocrisy towards the world's problems. How can we keep going in that direction? The main character is a representation of the aware masses, those that convince themselves that they are ecological, that they are compassionate about the world's issues, those that give a pound, a dollar, a euro to some random guy in the street with a t-shirt saying “Save Children in Haiti”, those that will go buy organic food because they are against the pollution of the world, those that will then buy food grown with chemicals because organic food is now contaminated by E.Coli, those that will buy expensive second hand cloth just to say that they wear second hand vintage, those that will buy a hybrid car, yet fly multiple times a year to go from New York to Tokyo to London on planes that burn four liters of fuel every... second.

Fashion

I will have to find a balance between the informative and the decorative, as this is still an abstract piece, and I don't want, as of now, to have any writing, relying more on the visuals to convince the viewer.

Norman Rockwell

For this I am going to need two types of artistic reference.

The visual.

The informative.

Again, because of art direction, I will concentrate more on the visuals at first, adapting from their. In the visual category, two types will also be found, for the first two parts of the piece.

The first part being outside, in the real world, the second in abstraction.

Part One.

Fashion

In part one, I will go towards a strong, crisp, highly contrasted look for the environment. I am thinking mainly in the lines of Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, the commercials of the 1950's, fashion drawings of the time, the comics, pop art and probably more as my research increases.

Edward Hopper

In part two, where abstraction dominates, the likes of Malevich, Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, the Bauhaus Movement, as well as some elements of Miro. For the animation, an obvious one would be Lauren McLaren.

Malevich

Malevich

What I only noticed later on was the differentiation between the two parts. Now I am more convinced about it, I will keep the same colors, and probably the same techniques of production, involving things like textures, type of lines, typography, yet the main difference will be in the influence. I therefore hope that it will be understandable, with the post-war consumerist society in the first part being the main influence, while a pre-war Russian and German art movement, with links to Dada would guide the second part. Yet in both parts I find that there is a link, both in style, colors, textures and more.

Andy Warhol

Kandinsky

Two different worlds opposed. The link would then be how the art's evolved from the 30's to the 50's, as I might even have a look, actually I will, at Abstract Expressionism. The man is taken through the mixer of the 1930's and comes out as a product of society in the 1950's.

All of this is still very confused and I will need to clean up and arrange everything together. There is a reason why I called this inconsistent rambling.

Ideas for Pitch:

Man is overwhelmed by consumerism.

Man is submerged by consumerism and is lost in shape and music.

Evolution of society.

We are all consumers.

A man is changed by the changes wrought to the world before and after WWII.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

This is an interesting play with stop motion my brother did at the Museum of Moving Images in NYC. Mine got deleted the moment I was about to send it, but his I find quit funny in it's randomness. You only had a minute or two to work on it.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

One-a-Day - Abstract. This is also part of experiments for the PS-24 (Project Soundtrack 24). I am trying to define a clear environment and colour theme. I will go through a lot of different experimentations, going into different directions.

Today I went to the MoMA and saw some really awesome stuff, so inspiration is abundant here.